Puck Naked

After practice on a recent morning at Madison Square Garden, the Russian hockey star Alexei Kovalev, who plays forward for the Pittsburgh Penguins, was removing his pads in the visitors' dressing room. As he did so, he talked casually with Bill Clement, a retired player who now does hockey commentary on ESPN, about scoring goals, which is something that Kovalev has become very good at.

"When you're on a breakaway, how do you decide whether to shoot or deke?" Clement asked.

"Well," Kovalev said. "It depends." He had removed his gloves, his helmet, his practice jersey, his elbow pads, his shoulder pads, his skates, and his pants—pounds and pounds of sweat-soaked gear. He still had on a black turtleneck, a protective cup (over a pair of black gym shorts), shin pads, and hockey socks—big black thigh-high knit stockings held up by an industrial-strength garter belt. "If I'm going to deke, I have to make sure the goalie can't reach me with the stick. If I'm going to shoot, I don't want to wait too long."

"What are you looking for?" Clement asked.

"I'm looking to see what the goalie is going to do," Kovalev said. He unclipped his garter belt, then peeled off the socks and the shin pads, which fell to the floor like a giant pair of dead scarabs. "I'm looking for him to move or show something." In a deep, Russian-accented voice, he elaborated on some of his breakaway tricks, speaking quickly, and with great enthusiasm, through his turtleneck as he pulled it over his head.

"He doesn't know," a teammate called out. "He's making it up!" The voice belonged to Mario Lemieux, the owner of the Penguins (he plays for the team, too), who sat a few stalls down, buttoning a blue dress shirt.

Kovalev ignored him, focussing instead on Clement's hypothetical goalie. "All the time, I am keeping the good distance between me and him," he said. He tossed aside the garter belt. Then it was off with the cup and, finally, the shorts. "I am telling him, 'Look at my face!' "

"Right," Clement said. "Create a diversion."

Kovalev was naked now, standing in the middle of the locker room, six feet two, two hundred and fifteen pounds, with his arms out in front of him as though he were bearing down alone on a goalie, with the puck on his stick. "You can show here"—he feinted left. "You can show there"—he feinted right. "You don't know where you're going to shoot"—and he froze.

Clement stood before him, in an expensive-looking camel-hair coat, storing this information for the broadcast that night of the Penguins' game against the Rangers. Now if Kovalev could only get a breakaway . . .

Kovalev straightened up. "I'll try to get one," he said, thoughtfully. Then he headed for the showers.